Slide presentations are a major form of communicating information to people. These presentations comprise information displayed on one or more slides with verbal communications based on the information displayed on the slides. Historically, these presentations have occurred in front of groups of people at one location. For example, a major component of many seminars and workshops is the slide presentation. The advancements in technology have provided new ways to use slide presentations to convey information to people. The Internet has initiated new ways for people to communicate and exchange information.
One activity resulting from technology advancements has been web-conferencing. Web conferencing is a procedure that allows conferencing events to be shared with multiple remote locations. This procedure and format allows real-time point-to-point communications between parties. In addition, web-conferencing provides for multicast communications from one sender to many receivers. Web-conferencing technology also offers information of text-based messages, voice and video chat to be shared simultaneously, across geographically dispersed locations. Applications for web conferencing include meetings, training events, lectures, or short presentations from any computer.
FIG. 1 illustrates a general configuration for a web-based conference or seminar. This process begins with the creation of a presentation that usually contains some audio and visual elements such as slides. The creator/presenter 100 uploads this presentation to a host provider location 102. This host provider can be a server device located on a network that is remote from the presenter and from those who will eventually view the presentation. Common names for this type of presentation in this format include web-conferencing and web-seminar (“webinar”). In implementation, the presenter 100 announces the activity and invites persons to attend. At the time of the activity, the presenter 100 accesses the presentation at the hosting provider 102. The attendees 104, 106, 108 and 110 also access the hosting provider to view the presentation. In the current webinar configuration, the presenter has access to and controls the presentation. The attendees access the hosting provider and view the presentation. The attendees have no control over the visual information presented. In some configurations, the attendees can ask questions of the presenter. When an attendee asks a question, the presenter can stop the presentation and answer the question. As shown in FIG. 1, the presenter 100 has the ability to transmit to and receive information from the hosting provider 102. However, as also shown, the attendees can only access and view information from the hosting provider.
During a webinar, the attendees can view the slides from the hosting provider. In another arrangement, the attendees can download the presentation to their local machine and view the presentation as it is occurring. However, currently, attendees who want to download the presentation files have to wait for files to be downloaded to their computers to follow along with a presentation. When this occurs, the speaker/presenter has to wait and initiate small talk to fill the time while attendees wait for the completion of the downloaded files. Although as previously discussed, presenters may offer a web-based version of the presentation, however, many users prefer to use locally installed applications for improved performance and to enable them to mark up (make specific notes) the slides during the presentation.
There remains a need for a method and system to enable a hybrid presentation that accommodates web presentation combined with efficient installation of a local copy.